Across the streaming world, companies have been focused on adding features that make their top-tier subscriptions more valuable to the users who consume their content. Anime streamer Crunchyroll recently added access to a library of digital manga for top-paying customers. Spotify—somewhat belatedly—has begun offering high-quality audio for its Premium subscribers.
SoundCloud is taking a different approach. It operates a standard streaming platform, with 100 million licensed tracks. But SoundCloud also has an enviable base of creators—musicians, DJs, podcasters, and more—who have uploaded 300 million tracks on the service to reach fans and make money from their streams.
Now, it’s rolling out a revamped subscription that overdelivers for these artists, giving them more opportunities to get their music in front of fans who might eventually buy an album or piece of artist merchandise as streaming remains a foot in the door to real earnings.
SoundCloud’s new offering enables subscribers to both of its tiers—Artist and Artist Pro—to distribute the music they have on SoundCloud to other streaming services, with SoundCloud passing 100% of those earnings on to artists. With this update, SoundCloud will no longer take a 20% cut of royalties it pays for streams, passing 100% to artists.
SoundCloud also now allows artists to receive direct support from fans. With the new features, the price of its Artist and Artist Pro subscriptions—$39 and $99 a year, respectively—are unchanged. It’s a move that acknowledges that even if streaming isn’t where artists earn the lion’s share of their money, they still need to reach as many people as possible—and SoundCloud doing that helps save them money.
“If you’re an artist who’s got to get your music distributed and you’re on the social platforms trying to build up a following and you’re paying for a whole host of things in the value chain, those subscriptions start to really add up,” says Eliah Seton, CEO of SoundCloud. “What we’re trying to do is be this all-in-one bundle that gets you a lot of value and you can start to put away some of those other subscriptions.”
Seton knows the music industry—before joining SoundCloud in 2021, he spent more than a decade at Warner Music Group, including a stint leading its distribution and label services arm ADA. He understands the importance of getting artists in front of as many fans as possible. That’s why he’s betting that making distribution widely accessible for the first time will strengthen SoundCloud’s ability to not just attract new artists, but keep them on the platform as their stars rise by connecting them with the platform’s highly engaged listeners.
“Historically we’ve been able to distribute for artists, but that was oriented more toward a bespoke, white-glove, traditional artist services relationship,” Seton says. “This is a much more scalable solution for at-scale artists, and making it a feature of our paid subscription is a key element of the value proposition.”
SoundCloud’s two-sided Marketplace
In the streaming world, Soundcloud—founded in 2007—has long been an anomaly. “It’s one of the only—if not the only—streaming platforms that truly has a two-sided marketplace,” says Tatiana Cirisiano, VP of music strategy at entertainment data and insights firm MIDia.
Seton sees making distribution a standard part of SoundCloud’s artist subscriptions as a way to add value for those users.
The service’s $39 a year Artist tier now includes the ability to distribute and monetize two tracks a month, while its $99 a year Artist Pro subscription allows artists to distribute unlimited tracks to other streaming services.
The move reflects a larger industry shift: Record labels are losing their monopoly on distribution as artist-focused platforms offer alternative ways to reach listeners.
Cirisano points to TikTok’s SoundOn distribution service, which puts artists’ songs on streaming platforms and helps promote them in the video app. SoundCloud’s effort, she says, is “the latest indication that distribution for the music industry has become this table stakes feature” for platforms serving artists.
Seton sees SoundCloud’s new distribution tools as critical for keeping artists on his platform. SoundCloud doesn’t have any problem attracting up-and-coming artists—Seton says 40,000 users upload their first track to SoundCloud every week. But when they reach a certain level and want to reach more listeners, they often opt to spend their money with pure-play distribution companies. Now they can use SoundCloud to monetize their music as they grow.
New ways to connect with fans
SoundCloud also added the ability for fans to directly support an artist—paying them up to $1,000—via their the artist’s SoundCloud profile. The platform takes zero commission on these payments. Cirsiano sees it as a small but potentially meaningful option, similar to what Patreon has long offered creators and artists.
“I wouldn’t call it a game-changer in how artists are monetizing because I think there’s a lot of cultural hurdles to adoption,” Cirisano says. “It differs strongly by fanbase and artist. It’s all about how people perceive it and what it means to them to send money directly to an artist.”
The fan support feature comes on the heels of other SoundCloud tools for fan engagement. Since 2023, SoundCloud’s AI-powered First Fans helps deliver new music to users likely to enjoy. This year, it has added services for its artist users, including a partnership with vinyl presser ElasticStage to offer on-demand record pressing. It also introduced a merch store that allows artists to keep 100% of their sales. The on-demand vinyl feature, launched in July, currently has a waiting list of artists who want to use the service.
Cirisano says these efforts could change the perception that SoundCloud is largely for early-stage artists who will move to other services once they break through. (Billie Eilish famously uploaded her early recordings and connected with fans via SoundCloud.) “These opportunities allow artists to grow with the platform,” she says.
As the broader music industry focuses on monetizing superfans—highly engaged listeners who are happy to shell out for vinyl and merch—Seton says SoundCloud has those in droves. He notes that 50% of SoundCloud listeners are listening to new music, looking for their next favorite artist, as opposed to 15% on other music streaming platforms.
“The future is going to be defined by the monetization of the relationship between artists and fans,” he says. “Rather than going outside the ecosystem to pay a different subscription where you don’t ultimately control access to your audience, we can scratch that itch for you as part of our own subscription.”
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